Community Transmission - Matchmaking

Matchmaking is a common conversation topic within the community and we wanted to take a few moments to talk about what we have planned for the coming months.

Coming in the Squad System Update are some further changes to Matchmaking. Without getting too technical, we are changing the way the game and our servers interact with each other when switching rounds, and with these changes should come a host of benefits All of which you’ll read below.

End of Round (EOR) matchmaking is a feature you will have noticed before. It’s something that has been turned on and tested at intermittent periods over the last few months. We’ve had some good success with it, but the testing also flagged some issues, such as being placed in empty servers.

The Squad System update aims to correct these issues and shortly after it’s released, we will be turning on the EOR matchmaking.

Once the EOR matchmaking has been switched on, we hope to leave it on and by doing so, we hope to achieve a number of things.

Bring Balance
When matchmaking, we’ve always tried to match players of similar skill level. However, since you would only matchmake once in the previous system, you sometimes found yourself in a not so enjoyable experience. This was due to a lack of EOR matchmaking, which meant that when you joined a game, you were in it until you left.

The result of this meant that as people left and the original balance degraded, your experience was sometimes less than optimal. With EOR matchmaking taking place after each match, players and teams should be “scrambled” more often making is less likely that you will find yourself stuck in a poorly balanced game for more than a few rounds.

Fuller Servers
The system currently in place favours the creation of setting up new servers with the minimum number of players.
As we move forward with the new system, we will be changing the matchmaking behaviour so it prioritises filling up existing servers as opposed to starting new ones.

What this means is that with more matchmaking events occurring at a server level, you should find yourself joining games where the server is trending towards being full, rather than starting a new, empty server.

Ping Site Changes
We have added a new default setting to the ping site option. When you have this selected, the game will attempt to match you to any of the ping sites that you have the best ping to. In the real world, this means that if you are located in Europe and have a good ping to both Frankfurt [FRA] and Dublin [DUB], you could be matched to either one, meaning you should find games a lot quicker.

These changes will start to arrive alongside the September update and further updates will be made in the months after, as we continue to tweak and improve the matchmaking system.

Replies

To give some further insight on this. The EOR matchmaking will be turned on after the update is live, it won't be active straight away.

Once we're happy with the updates stability we will turn on the EOR matchmaking for a 24 hour period and monitor how it goes. From there, we can turn on / off as required. Your feedback will be vital during this time.

To give some further insight on this. The EOR matchmaking will be turned on after the update is live, it won't be active straight away.

Once we're happy with the updates stability we will turn on the EOR matchmaking for a 24 hour period and monitor how it goes. From there, we can turn on / off as required. Your feedback will be vital during this time.

The player base for PC players from Australia and New Zealand is small. It can take sending out invites to friends to get a Galactic Assault match going. When we do get a match going it would be best to have the same players stay on the server but scramble the teams after each map IF the teams are unbalanced. The NZ/AU pc player base is to small to be sending players to different servers after a map has finished.

Also PC players from Australia and New Zealand only get low ping to Australia server. All other servers we are getting at least 200 ping which gives connection warnings and plenty of lag related issues.

I don't want to be put on laggy servers IF we got an Australian server GA match going.

Most of the time i play on usa servers but when there's an Australian server GA match going there's no way i'm playing on usa servers.

Please add a server browser like battlefield. In smaller regions like south America players never find games so they go to the US region, like I read some Australian/Asian players doing. This worsens the problem by becoming a self fulfilling prophecy where players leave because of a small user base and there's a small user base because players leave. It's a vicious cycle. Let us browse servers so we at least know if there are games going on or we can join a full server and wait for our turn.

LOVE it! And boy does that explain a few things. Have noted the empty server thing several times but super glad to see more balanced teams. Any time someone walks away from blast with 40-50 kills, you know something is amiss. As an average skill old guy who did not grow up with a joystick in his hand, maybe I can feel like king-of-the-mountain once more!

I'm not sure how high the ping needs to be to get connection warning but on Australian servers i get 45 ping no connection warning and it feels great. shots register a lot better than say usa servers where i get 200 ping connection warning 3 white bars or even 2 red bars freeze lag.

The player base for PC players from Australia and New Zealand is small. It can take sending out invites to friends to get a Galactic Assault match going. When we do get a match going it would be best to have the same players stay on the server but scramble the teams after each map IF the teams are unbalanced. The NZ/AU pc player base is to small to be sending players to different servers after a map has finished.

Also PC players from Australia and New Zealand only get low ping to Australia server. All other servers we are getting at least 200 ping which gives connection warnings and plenty of lag related issues.

I don't want to be put on laggy servers IF we got an Australian server GA match going.

Most of the time i play on usa servers but when there's an Australian server GA match going there's no way i'm playing on usa servers.

Sometimes Japan isn't too bad, but I agree. I would rather stay in Aus servers and scramble the teams over moving to a higher ping server. BTW Australia doesn't have only PC players.

Sorry but if this "matchmaking" is anything like the tests it will be an abysmal failure. Every test you guys have tried it has lead to half empty lobbies, broken games, and people having to go search out new games after 1-2 rounds. You could have, and should have just had team scramble after the end of a map, but your developers seems completely resistant to the idea. No "algorithm" based matchmaking formula is going to be able to account for things like people leaving mid-match, differing skills levels, and the small population which may be online at the time.

I hope I'm wrong but based on what you guys have tested to date, I'm very pessimistic about this.

@F8RGE Without player stats how is matchmaking accurate? You can have level 70 troopers and still stink at the game. Simply by playing a lot and unlocking and earning credits.can we bring back stats like we had in BF 2015?

So... Good stuff. One more thing. If we are doing matchmaking at the EOR then maybe you could add map voting system. Since the matchmaking system will create new servers most of the time? Please? I have taken a break from Battlefront 2 for a month or two and when I got back into action... First map is a foocking Crait... Second is foocking Kashiik.. The most hated maps... I went on to search new matches. And almost broke my mouse

@F8RGE Without player stats how is matchmaking accurate? You can have level 70 troopers and still stink at the game. Simply by playing a lot and unlocking and earning credits.can we bring back stats like we had in BF 2015?

I was wondering this too, not that I mind as I've seen plenty of low level players with talent and vice versa.

I don't have high hopes for this matchmaking revamp. I'm expecting the same results as the past several - ie. I'll still end up wasting my evenings trying to find a game unsuccessfully instead of actually being able to play the game.

A pleasant surprise would of course be welcome, as this game can be fun on the super rare occasion I can find a game...

I’ve been getting kicked out of every Galactic Assault match. I can only play 2 complete games tops before getting kicked. Every other mode works fine. HVV BLST EWKHNT etc... what’s the deal with that?

This is not enough. We require server browsers.
This cannot be hard to implement--every other game except for Battlefront 1 has a server browser.
The game is practically dead in the Oceania region. We have to invite friends to start servers, and beg people NOT to leave the lobby while we wait for 10-15minutes.

Your suggested changes are a measly band-aid that will eventually come off, showing a festering wound that requires the ability for players to see what servers are available, and choose between them. People can't even find servers at the moment, and there are servers running but they don't have friends on Origin, so they just drift into and out of lobbies hoping to find a slot.

Server browser fixes this. Even with your matchmaking changes that you tested, there were still severe unbalances. Massive unbalances that weren't addressed.
All of which can be addressed by introducing server browser and allowing players to go to another server if there's a domination occurring in one server.

This is not enough. We require server browsers.
This cannot be hard to implement--every other game except for Battlefront 1 has a server browser.
The game is practically dead in the Oceania region. We have to invite friends to start servers, and beg people NOT to leave the lobby while we wait for 10-15minutes.

Your suggested changes are a measly band-aid that will eventually come off, showing a festering wound that requires the ability for players to see what servers are available, and choose between them. People can't even find servers at the moment, and there are servers running but they don't have friends on Origin, so they just drift into and out of lobbies hoping to find a slot.

Server browser fixes this. Even with your matchmaking changes that you tested, there were still severe unbalances. Massive unbalances that weren't addressed.
All of which can be addressed by introducing server browser and allowing players to go to another server if there's a domination occurring in one server.

Server.
Browser.

This is the one thing this game really needs and we've been begging for it for years now. I guess it's more important to release a trooper with slightly different colors.

I love SW, and I'm relatively new to FPS. I really hope matchmaking works. In both SWBF and SWBF2, I continually get loaded into games with so many advanced players. I cannot progress since I'm simply KD fodder within mere seconds of spawning in. While I practice in the many offline modes, I cannot enjoy any of the multiplayer experiences or even attempt to get better. This makes the game literally unplayable for me, so I leave many matches frustrated at the online multiplayer experience. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Incoming Transmission Bring Balance
When matchmaking, we’ve always tried to match players of similar skill level. However, since you would only matchmake once in the previous system, you sometimes found yourself in a not so enjoyable experience. This was due to a lack of EOR matchmaking, which meant that when you joined a game, you were in it until you left.

The result of this meant that as people left and the original balance degraded, your experience was sometimes less than optimal. With EOR matchmaking taking place after each match, players and teams should be “scrambled” more often making is less likely that you will find yourself stuck in a poorly balanced game for more than a few rounds.

So you will be bringing balance to the Force Battlefront.
Glad to hear it. AOD had the Imps on Hoth down to 48 walker health... Within 2 minutes.

The player base for PC players from Australia and New Zealand is small. It can take sending out invites to friends to get a Galactic Assault match going. When we do get a match going it would be best to have the same players stay on the server but scramble the teams after each map IF the teams are unbalanced. The NZ/AU pc player base is to small to be sending players to different servers after a map has finished.

Also PC players from Australia and New Zealand only get low ping to Australia server. All other servers we are getting at least 200 ping which gives connection warnings and plenty of lag related issues.

I don't want to be put on laggy servers IF we got an Australian server GA match going.

Most of the time i play on usa servers but when there's an Australian server GA match going there's no way i'm playing on usa servers.

Matchmaking is a common conversation topic within the community and we wanted to take a few moments to talk about what we have planned for the coming months.

Coming in the Squad System Update are some further changes to Matchmaking. Without getting too technical, we are changing the way the game and our servers interact with each other when switching rounds, and with these changes should come a host of benefits All of which you’ll read below.

End of Round (EOR) matchmaking is a feature you will have noticed before. It’s something that has been turned on and tested at intermittent periods over the last few months. We’ve had some good success with it, but the testing also flagged some issues, such as being placed in empty servers.

The Squad System update aims to correct these issues and shortly after it’s released, we will be turning on the EOR matchmaking.

Once the EOR matchmaking has been switched on, we hope to leave it on and by doing so, we hope to achieve a number of things.

Bring Balance
When matchmaking, we’ve always tried to match players of similar skill level. However, since you would only matchmake once in the previous system, you sometimes found yourself in a not so enjoyable experience. This was due to a lack of EOR matchmaking, which meant that when you joined a game, you were in it until you left.

The result of this meant that as people left and the original balance degraded, your experience was sometimes less than optimal. With EOR matchmaking taking place after each match, players and teams should be “scrambled” more often making is less likely that you will find yourself stuck in a poorly balanced game for more than a few rounds.

Fuller Servers
The system currently in place favours the creation of setting up new servers with the minimum number of players.
As we move forward with the new system, we will be changing the matchmaking behaviour so it prioritises filling up existing servers as opposed to starting new ones.

What this means is that with more matchmaking events occurring at a server level, you should find yourself joining games where the server is trending towards being full, rather than starting a new, empty server.

Ping Site Changes
We have added a new default setting to the ping site option. When you have this selected, the game will attempt to match you to any of the ping sites that you have the best ping to. In the real world, this means that if you are located in Europe and have a good ping to both Frankfurt [FRA] and Dublin [DUB], you could be matched to either one, meaning you should find games a lot quicker.

These changes will start to arrive alongside the September update and further updates will be made in the months after, as we continue to tweak and improve the matchmaking system.

As always, we’re looking forward to hearing what you think.

Punch it

Fantastic news. This explains a lot. Really looking forward to this update. Hopefully everything will fall in place smoothly.

The player base for PC players from Australia and New Zealand is small. It can take sending out invites to friends to get a Galactic Assault match going. When we do get a match going it would be best to have the same players stay on the server but scramble the teams after each map IF the teams are unbalanced. The NZ/AU pc player base is to small to be sending players to different servers after a map has finished.

Also PC players from Australia and New Zealand only get low ping to Australia server. All other servers we are getting at least 200 ping which gives connection warnings and plenty of lag related issues.

I don't want to be put on laggy servers IF we got an Australian server GA match going.

Most of the time i play on usa servers but when there's an Australian server GA match going there's no way i'm playing on usa servers.

Oh dear Krew ... not looking forward to this update!

I know i know. Their track record for making matchmaking and balanced matches better on Australian servers have absolutely failed.

And when you look at how long it took for them to fix us not being able to select Australian server issue. There's not much love for us down under

"Bring balance" eh? See improvements eh? I just played 5 rounds of star fighter assault (i./e. 2 1/2 maps) and the team I was on lost all 5 times. That's right, 5 out of 5. The other team just kept rolling us. Great "balancing" and "matchmaking". Seriously you guys couldn't match a pair of twins if they were the only 2 people in the room.

"Bring balance" eh? See improvements eh? I just played 5 rounds of star fighter assault (i./e. 2 1/2 maps) and the team I was on lost all 5 times. That's right, 5 out of 5. The other team just kept rolling us. Great "balancing" and "matchmaking". Seriously you guys couldn't match a pair of twins if they were the only 2 people in the room.

"Bring balance" eh? See improvements eh? I just played 5 rounds of star fighter assault (i./e. 2 1/2 maps) and the team I was on lost all 5 times. That's right, 5 out of 5. The other team just kept rolling us. Great "balancing" and "matchmaking". Seriously you guys couldn't match a pair of twins if they were the only 2 people in the room.

in addition to matchmaking issues i hav noticed probs with spawn camping. even tho spawn points r supposed 2 b random ive noticed many players who hop around the map 2 hit opps at points at a fairly high success rate. is it possible 2 create a delay between entry and damage to and from opps.?

any particular reason y i suddenly get a frozen screen when i try 2 log in SWBF2? keeps saying im offline and 2 press right analog 2 connect but when i do the screen freezes. smh. everytime man evvvvry time.

Also, PLEASE get rid of the min player limit for smaller regions. We can't start a game, people come, wait for a while and leave because we can't reach the number of players (this ultimately pushes people to look in other regions, becoming a self fulfilling prophecy: people leave because there are not enough players, there are not enough players because people leave for other regions).

Just set a timer, if we have been waiting for more than 5 minutes, just let us play. DO you have any idea how frustrating it is to want to play and be denied the opportunity because you don't think we should be able to play with a smaller number of players? You're literally forcing us out of the game.

I AM LEAVING MY PS4 ON SO THAT OTHER PLAYERS CAN MEET THE MIN PLAYER COUNT, AS AN ACT OF CHARITY TO THE COMMUNITY. Don't you see how ridiculous that is?

Has anyone commented on the changes to the number of heroes available? I'm not sure if this is a glitch or on purpose but they are also oddnumbered. I was defending on Jakku and we could only have 2 heroes and the first order had 3 on the 2nd phase. Also as the attackers on Theed, we had 3 heroes but on the 2nd stage the clones had 4 and after one of our heroes died we couldn't get our 3rd hero spot back so it was 2 on 4. Nothing mentioned in the patch notes. If this is a bug then it's a big one and can't take a month to sort but we know it will

You guys are doing absolutely amazing work with the new clone skins and the squad system... but your EOR matchmaking’s is trash, the end of round match making should even be match making, this is completely unfair to players whom have either recently joined or are still learning the ropes. You claim this will bring balance to the games where in truth is brings complete imbalance and just unfairness thought a campaign of galactic assualt. I have witnessed first hand what your matchmaking idea does to rounds, it brings people with lower skills together leaving anyone with level 50 or higher troops to completely slaughter the lower level players, battles go by just one after the other because lower leveled players don’t stand a chance against 20 level 70 players. What I’m trying to say is that instead of throwing people of the same skill level together, you should make it where players are mixed and matched, where there’s is an even amount of bother higher and lower level players on both sides of an assault. Today I took part in multiple battles and one after the other the battle was over in 5 minutes because all my team mates could do was stay in one spot hoping to be able to eliminate the enemy, for example on STARKILLER BASE I fought on the side of the resistance and where e spawned at the very beginning was where we were pinned down by mountains and mountains of level 57 - 70 players. I like hopefully many others on this forum believe that you should either change how you conduct the matchmaking or completely get rid of it and replace it with a more fair and suitable system. But apart from that keep up the fine work ladies and gentlemen

Squad system is a nice addition, but needs work. At any given time you can only spawn to 4 players "assuming" they are not in "combat" then you are out of luck. Player balance still a mess!
Just played a round of GA and one side was full of grinders who ended the match with 4 heroes in the top six. I am now looking at an empty lobby all of my fellow players who bailed from the game in disgust. Need 19 players to start the match now and no takers after about 5 minutes.
Dev's should have fixed the player matching before adding something like a Squad System. It is a welcome addition, but no one wants to play against a side full of level 40's and up when the other side is full of noobs.
If you want this game to survive to the next update, I suggest player balance be a top priority or no matter how much eye candy is added, no one will want to buy the game when word gets around that there is no player experience balancing in the games.
The hardcore SW fans own the game, it is the casual players who will buy copies now. Nerfing weapons isn't the answer, keeping grinders from filling one side of any game IS.